


1D OT3 Not!fic

by thMaddHatter



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - X Factor Fusion, Beards (Relationships), Complete Story, Long-Distance Friendship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Niall Horan & Liam Payne Friendship, Niall Horan & Louis Tomlinson Friendship, Not!Fic, OT3, OT5 Friendship, One Direction Imagines, Pansexual Harry, Secret Relationship, YouTuber Louis, YouTuber Niall, Ziam Mayne - Freeform, closeting, do not say that i didn't warn you, larry stylinson - Freeform, louis and niall are roommates, louis is out, somewhat real life timeline, this is a NOT!FIC, this is not a properly written story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:36:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5695009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thMaddHatter/pseuds/thMaddHatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall and Louis were sent home before the judges' houses,' but Zayn, Liam, and Harry continue on as solo acts. Through the web of friendship and the sparks of romance, the 5 boys maintain contact and are all able to make a name for themselves in the entertainment industry. But with heavy closeting and media manipulation, can these boys keep their connections or will relationships crumble under the heat of the spotlight?</p>
<p>(Basically, I had an idea for a pretty awesome fic, but will totally never write it. However I thought the idea for it was too good not to share. So I made it a not!fic. Read if you want.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1D OT3 Not!fic

**Author's Note:**

> In case I haven't mentioned it enough, this is not a fully written, fleshed out fic. This is just what I wrote down as I was thinking of the story. It does all come to completion, but it is not and will never be a written/finished/polished fic. If there was a possibility that I might do that, then I would never had posted this.
> 
> I did try to make it follow as close of a story line as real life. However, there is still a chance that some of the things mentioned are just flat out wrong. If that's the case, its simply because I didn't know off the top of my head and never bothered to fact check since it wasn't being fully written anyways. So sorry if there's any of that.

1D OT3

An AU where Louis bombs his audition but doesn’t get a second try, Niall still gets past but doesn’t make it further than boot camp. Zayn, Liam, and Harry make it to the bottom 4, but Aiden(?) still wins. Harry goes home first, then Zayn, then Liam.

After the finale airs, Zayn, Liam, and Harry post a short vid of the three of them harmonizing backstage and singing a short little tune stating the world hasn’t seen the last of them. The vid features all 3 of them showing off their vocals a bit, and they’re pressed closed together in a lighting that makes them look so adorable. The video goes viral, and the attention it draws internationally causes Simon to offer them a deal as a group.

Thus One Direction is born.

As the boys gain popularity as a band, Zayn and Liam start a secret relationship that isn’t as secret as they think it is and chatter starts in the fandom. So their management beards them, thinking it’ll all be fine. At the same time, Harry starts a tentative long distance romance with Louis, whom he never fell out of contact with after the bathroom incident. When gay rumors start up for Harry, all hell sort of runs loose as their management fights to cover up all the gay.

Meanwhile…

After Louis tanks his audition, he goes back to posting YouTube videos while at Uni, but starts adding in prank videos, gaming vids, some footie commentary, and vids of him whining about pop culture and taking the piss out of the usual gossip rags. He followed along with that season of x factor very closely with his vids, drawing in an extra-large fan base. He had also been openly gay and never tried to hide it, often using it as humor in his vids.

He had still met Harry in the bathrooms and they’d become long distance friends texting and messaging each other back and forth on twitter all throughout x factor and during the gap of time before it aired. They became very close that way and it quickly turned romantic. He’d also become pals with the other boys through interactions on twitter and them jumping in on their skype calls.

Also…

Niall goes back to Mullingar after his defeat, but maintains a friendly relationship with Liam, sending him messages and cheering him on via twitter. Nothing quite as close as what Louis and Harry have, but enough that he’s on the other lads’ radars as well.

He starts a blog as well, focusing more on current events and sports chatter, but always done in a way that it stays hilarious. He becomes pretty hometown famous for it, but when he starts adding gaming vids to the mix, his follower count starts to skyrocket to the millions like Louis’.

After a while, Louis’ fans and Niall’s fans start begging them to collab and they contact each other and do. At first it’s just a gaming vid for Niall that winds up being one of their most popular vids on either of their channels. They do another with them both watching the finale of X factor and commentating for Louis’ channel. It starts off with a mini skit about Louis throwing a temper tantrum and not wanting to watch it because they kicked off his husband, then turns into a livestream that the fans can participate in as well. It becomes one of the most watched x factor related vids and even garners a bit of media attention in some local news outlets.

The fans demand more, so they create a joint channel where they do more livestreams for big media events like awards shows, footie events, and premieres and finales of really popular shows as well as their individual vids. Between the 3 channels, they become the 3 biggest names on youtube.

Eventually, Niall starts attending the same uni as Louis and they become roommates. This makes the video creating process easier and they are able to put out even more videos with better quality. They maintain their livestreams as well because they seem to be a fan favorite.

Niall gets an internship at a radio station which is nice enough to let them film short stupid videos in there sometimes as long as its when Niall isn’t working, they don’t reveal the name of the studio, and never when they have big name celebrities coming.

Niall is working at the studio when One Direction comes by and Louis just so happens to show up anyways, but on his best behavior so he doesn’t get kicked out. When the lads come in, he has a brief adorable reunion with Harry and the other lads, as does Niall with Liam. By then they’re very close, but in a platonic way that Zayn doesn’t even worry about. The whole thing gets caught on video and spread on twitter causing the first inkling of Larry rumors.

Matters get worse when as the boys continue doing interviews and making appearances, Harry keeps getting spotted either wearing Louis’ actual clothes or jewelry, sporting his and Niall’s merchandise, or cheekily using him as the answers to any questions about girls.

The Larry rumors really start to pick up then, so 1D’s management amps up the no homo promo by painting Harry as a cougar chaser and a vagina slayer. The general public falls for it, but the Larries keep paying attention and can spot the fakeness a mile away. Since M!M had no control over him, Louis continued to call Harry his husband and heavily imply that they were dating without ever actually saying it.

The Larries notice all the shade that Louis throws toward any girl that’s associated with Harry in the press, insisting they’re all liars or that there’s no proof of anything. He keeps getting photographed behind the scenes at 1Ds shows, events, or hotels, but only by fans. It’s never picked up on in the media. Then they start getting matching tattoos and Larry becomes this huge monster of a thing in the fandom that management can’t quite get to go away, while outside of the fandom it’s heard of, but mostly as heresy and the imaginings of deluded fans.

So the lads of 1D get forced to start outright denying Larry, on record, on camera, and in print. Harry’s twitter—which is no longer under his complete control—even posts the tweet stating that Larry is the biggest load of bullshit he’s ever heard. Though he knows the truth about what’s going on, Louis’ absolutely gutted at having to see it all.

Simultaneously, Louis and Niall are starting to get courted by agents wanting to represent them. By the time 1D puts out their second album, Louis and Niall had made quite the name for themselves, becoming lauded as the breakout stars of YouTube, winning a few TCAs and PCAs. They’d been guests on talk shows in both America and the UK and Europe and had even done their own radio tour.

As the Larry stuff flared up in the 1D fandom as well as the Tommialler fandom, Louis’ new agents took it upon themselves to start linking Louis to any young gay men in the industry. When there were rumors that Louis had been sighted at the TMH release party, his reps absolutely tore it down by “leaking” pics of him holding hands with a young footballer who’d just come out.

When Harry found out about the fakelationship, he was pissed and it turned into a huge fight between him and Louis. They fought about it and made up over it off and on, again and again, over the course of 3 months until they’d both happened to be in LA at the same time and they’d gotten into a huge screaming match at a party that led to their official break-up. It had drawn the attention of onlookers and paparazzi, and though no audio made it out, there were definitely pictures of them screaming at each other and video footage of them each storming away angrily from the party. Harry was alone except for his driver, and Louis left hand in hand with his footballer.

Headlines the next week were all about Larry being dead, or Louis, Harry, and the footballer being in a love triangle and the other two duking it out over Louis. Other articles went on to investigate deeper into Harry and Louis’ histories much the same way that the Larries had and came forth with all the information that the Larries had dug up, but kept within the fandom. The Larry stories had been in the media’s line of sight for a month, despite losing its headline status to some Justin Bieber debacle. It was still a media frenzy and the commotion it had caused had skyrocketed Louis to fame, although not in the way he had hoped. However, his management team was clever and they capitalized on his sudden popularity to give him an even bigger name.

Separately from all the Larry drama, Niall had been asked to be a guest announcer for a footie match. He’d quite liked it and did it for a few other sports as well. He’d also been invited to be the guest DJ for some radio shows, guest hosted some sports and talk shows, and co-hosted some show specials as well for MTV and BBC. While Louis was getting caught up in drama, Niall was crafting himself quite the respected career for someone his age.

During the Larry media frenzy, Louis and his team took the opportunity to establish Louis’ brand while everybody still had his name in their mouths. He started getting endorsement deals left and right and making cameos in popular tv shows, and being platonically and professionally linked to serious musicians on both sides of the pond.

Fast forward to June 2015.

Niall is the host of his own radio show on BBC Radio as well as a co-host for a football after show.

Louis is now based in LA and is a regular guest host for GMA, and co-hosts with KeKe Palmer for their show Louis and KeKe. The show had started off as just the KeKe Show, but when the ratings were just shy of being satisfactory, they redid the tone and added Louis for the next season and the ratings went through the roof. As they prepared for their 3rd season, they had stolen the title of most watched talk show, and had even won its first Emmy.

Louis and Niall are still friends, and still upload videos to YouTube, but they are now more vlog style videos with the occasional gaming video, or livestreams because they don’t have the time anymore. They’ve taken to live tweeting shows they get paid to promote instead of livestreaming as they watch it.

The Larry rumors have gone cold for now, sticking mostly to the fandom with the only mentions in the media done in a mocking way. Harry no longer appears to be a cougar chaser, but is still seen as the flirty vagina slayer with a proclivity for Victoria’s Secret models. Louis had “broken up” with his footballer and after stunting a bit with some celebrities, he had been in an actual relationship with an American footballer. However they had broken up, but their teams had the media playing up the dramatics of it all, making it seem like they were on the rocks but trying to work it out. Really they’d been done for a while now.

Harry and Louis don’t really keep in contact anymore except hearing about each other via the other 3 boys.

When all the Larry subsided, the band was able to continue on perfectly with Liam and Zayn heavily bearded. However, the Ziamists never gave up on them, the Larries were just always louder. What with the gay rumors mostly off their backs, Zayn and Liam started to get a little more confident and people started noticing their strange closeness again.

The gay rumors started up in the media after Liam posted a video Zayn had recorded of him singing in the shower. Zayn’s voice had gotten cut off when he started talking at the end right as Liam’s naked legs stepped out, so they thought everything would be fine. But the fans noticed because they know Zayn’s voice so well, they could pick it out even if it was there for only half a second. Then a fan pointed out that it was filmed in the same exact bathroom that Zayn had filmed a video in a few months ago when the boys were on break and supposedly not seeing each other. When a particularly annoying writer caught wind of that, he posted an article mentioning it and then speculating whether or not they lived together, copying almost exactly a masterpost that he’d found on Tumblr. After that, other media outlets were starting to hop on the bandwagon, citing Tumblr and Twitter posts that seemed to prove that they each not only hated each other’s girlfriends, but they even hated their own.

After weeks of ignoring the comments and questions, they finally agree to make a huge announcement on Louis and Keke without revealing to either host what it was. They made their premiere episode all about One Direction and even aired it live. Louis and Keke had come prepared to reveal the Ziam come out anyways because they had been so sure that was it.

Instead, when they made it to that part of the episode, Harry—after spending the entire rest of the time flirting mercilessly with Louis—revealed that he was pansexual and that he had dated men in the past though mentioning none by name. Although he was gesturing heavily toward Louis while explaining for the audience what pansexual was, and he put a strong emphasis on the fact that some of the rumors they’d heard in the past were unfounded, but some of them were true. Again not mentioning any individually, but saying it while eyes locked with Louis the whole time.

After that, the Larry feeding frenzy starts up again, but all 5 boys act blind deaf and dumb to it despite getting hounded about it from all sides, and 1 direction goes on ahead with their American tour like nothing happened.

Behind the scenes, Louis and Harry get back together almost immediately, but agree to keep it top secret for the time being. No teasing or flirting on camera or anything.

When it’s time for 1D’s 5th album to start up their promo, their team releases a sudden announcement that they won’t be touring the album and that the boys will be going on an indefinite hiatus at the end of the year. This sends the fandom and media into a downward spiral of breakup rumors that, like everything else, never gets addressed by the band themselves.

The boys have no intention of breaking up, but their contract has ended and they refuse to resign with the same people, so they get scooped up by an American label and management company that allows them more freedom and spends the hiatus cleaning up their images in the press.

During the hiatus, they even let Louis and Harry come out, but not with some big announcement. They just tell them that they’re allowed to go out and be seen in public together. They’re free to do whatever they want. So the boys do just that, getting spotted together with all sorts of speculations until finally they just get papped openly holding hands. At this point, anyone can tell that they’re in a relationship, but they continue to refuse to confirm the rumors. Eventually the media stops asking for confirmation and just begin to approach it as fact. This is especially the case when Louis starts referring to Harry as his husband in his videos again.

Zayn starts looking heavily into fashion and starts work to create his own fashion line. Meanwhile Liam starts up on a solo career, but no music comes out until the end of 2016. He does phenomenally. Using his popularity and media relevance, Zayn uses Liam as the face of his new brand. It also gives him an excuse to spend even more time with Liam.

Fast forward again to the epilogue and on March 25th 2017, Zayn and Liam are in the studio in London with Niall to promote the new clothing line that will be hitting the stores soon. During the interview, Niall asks them about their relationship statuses, citing how they’d both broken up with their SOs rather abruptly during the first part of their hiatus. They both laugh kind of awkwardly and say engaged at the same time. Niall acts shocked and asks, but wait, who are you guys engaged to? Then they laugh awkwardly again and say “to each other,” at the same time. Niall asks the usual questions about dates and don’t you think you’re kinda young, and I’m gonna be the best man right? Completely ignoring the question of when they got together or their sexualities.

Like with everything else with this band, they never address it and the media goes fucking nuts with it. Instead, whenever asked, they mention how the wedding won’t interfere with all the work the 3 of them have been putting into their impending 6th album.

(This wound up being very Larry centric despite the fact that the original plan was to write a Ziam story. Ideally, it would have spent a good bit of time focused on the Niam friendship as well, but the media manipulation and lies were always meant to be the focus.)

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly think this is a really great idea. Of course, I'm rather biased, so if you actually read this, tell me what you think.
> 
> What would you have liked to see?
> 
> What would you have liked to be changed?
> 
> Just cause I'm not gonna write it doesn't mean I wouldn't love to talk about it.
> 
> Questions, comments, criticisms? I'd love to hear them all.


End file.
